No Break for Snus

A bid by Swedish Match to be the first company in the US to display milder warnings on its tobacco product suffered a legal blow when a panel of experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that the proposed label did not fully convey the product’s health risks.

The company argues that its product, snus, is far less harmful than cigarettes and that any warning label should reflect that. The company argued that the existing rules, which treat all tobacco products as equally dangerous, are misleading and actually endanger consumers. But the panel of outside experts repeatedly said more studies were needed before they could be sure such a change was justified for a tobacco product. They said that the research the company presented did not rule out certain health risks, such as adverse effects in pregnancy, and that the proposed label did not reflect that.

The panel’s recommendations are not binding, but opponents of smoking said the FDA is unlikely to approve the company’s application after the meeting gave it the cold shoulder.

“FDA will have no choice but to reject Swedish Match’s application,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, an antismoking group. The agency has until June to rule on the company’s application.

Swedish Match says that snus is 90% less harmful than cigarettes and argues that the product’s popularity in Sweden helped drive rates of lung cancer and oral cancer in men to the lowest levels in Europe. The company submitted more than 130,000 pages of documents, hoping to prove the claims, including dozens of studies and 50 years of data from snus users in Sweden.